Windows 10: The Features That Will Matter

I went to this week's event expecting to see both some fairly finished code and some things that weren't ready yet, and that's certainly what we saw.

Microsoft has a long history of showing off new versions of Windows long before they ship and with good reason: it needs to get developers to create applications for the new versions and corporate users ready to evaluate if they need an upgrade. So having seen such versions in progress for the past 30 years or so, I went to this week's event expecting to see both some fairly finished code and some things that weren't ready yet, and that's certainly what we saw.

Earlier, I talked about what appear to be Microsoft's goals for the new release. Here I want to look a bit closer at the OS itself and how it will impact users, enterprises, and developers.

(Belfiore and Start Menu)

One key to making the OS acceptable for Windows 7 and corporate users is the return of the more familiar Start menu from Windows 7 for desktop and laptop users, albeit in a form that now looks closer to Windows 8 with a more "modern" look and the option of integrating active tiles. This kind of Start menu makes more sense on a mouse- and keyboard-driven system, and is simply more familiar to many users.

Windows veteran Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president of the operating systems group, demoed the latest version, showing off some things that have changed since the earlier preview builds. Now, even in desktop mode, you can make the Start menu take the full screen, so it looks more like Windows 8. You can also now pan in from the right edge to get an updated "action center," where you can see app notifications (just as you can now in Android and iOS) and can quickly change your settings, such as moving into airplane mode. He showed how applications can make this more useful, so you can do things such as replying to a message directly from within this pane.

One big change is the long-promised "continuum" feature, designed for 2-in-1 systems, where Windows now asks you to enter or exit "tablet mode" when you detach or attach a keyboard. In tablet mode, you get the full-screen Start menu and typically work with full-screen applications (though you can still dock "tiles" as in Windows 8), but while retaining the familiar Windows desktop taskbar. The transition seems much less jarring than moving from "modern" apps to the traditional Windows desktop in Windows 8, in part because the new applications can now run within windows on the desktop, just like traditional Win32 applications. This also allows Windows tablets to become more flexible by acting more like desktops or notebooks when connected to external keyboards and monitors.

Cortana: Speaking to Windows

(Cortana)

One big change for Windows 10 is the addition of Cortana, Microsoft's natural-language based "personal assistant." You can call it up by saying "Hey Cortana" or by typing into a box that resides in the taskbar in the desktop mode. (In the tablet mode, there's just an icon for Cortana, as you're more likely to speak rather than type.)

While the demos were a bit hokey—Belfiore kept calling Cortana a "she"—there's no question it's a useful tool for finding information from the Internet via Bing or in searching the information on your computer or your personal or professional files in the cloud. Indeed, Microsoft made big points about how much "more personal" Cortana was compared with other assistants in terms of learning your information and your preferences. For instance, a demo asked Cortana to show photos taken in December, and it searched the local machine and the OneDrive service. Other demos included getting Cortana to play music, or using it to send a memo while working on a spreadsheet. At the same time, Microsoft stressed privacy controls such as a Notebook feature that lets you see and edit what Cortana knows about you.

Cortana looks good, through it still likely needs more users to get smarter about answering questions. All of these systems work in part by tracking the questions users ask and the answers they seem happy with, but Cortana today has far fewer users than Apple's or Google's solutions. For instance, this week I asked all three systems, "Where will the Super Bowl be played?" Google Now included the answer in its reply (also telling me the teams that will be playing); Siri's spoken answer didn't include the place, but the first link showed the answer; Cortana only included a few links to Super Bowl sites, and I had to do a bit of linking and browsing to get the answer.

Speech and Cortana are now built in much tighter throughout the operating system, so that anywhere you can enter text, you can speak it as well, which is particularly useful on the phones.

Spartan: A More Modern Browser

Another big change in Windows 10 will be a new browser, which has the codename Spartan. This will have a new user interface—one designed to look more like the rest of the system—and a bunch of new features, but Microsoft said it won't be available in the next build of Windows 10, but will appear later in PC builds and even later on phone builds (though it is slated to be part of the OS).

Spartan has a new rendering engine, designed to be faster, but the emphasis seems to be on adding new features.

One interesting departure is a note-taking mode, where you can draw on a Web page with your finger or a stylus, or simply add comments with a mouse and keyboard, then freeze the page so it captures it with your comments but still has active links (above). This creates what Belfiore called a "rich canvas for sharing," letting you copy the page into OneNote or the clipboard (for use in other applications) or share it on Facebook, Twitter, or via email. It's a neat idea.

Another change is a new "reading mode" that makes it easier to read Web pages by letting you view all of the pages in a standardized format so there aren't the differences in sizes and fonts (and apparently no ads either). It also allows you to save pages to a reading list to be read offline, including support for PDF files. There are popular apps that already do this, such as Instapaper and Pocket, but it's nice to have it integrated in the browser.

And finally, Cortana will be built into the new browser, so that as you look at a page, it might offer suggestions. In the demo, he showed off how when you are looking at a restaurant website, it can offer directions and open hours, as well as Yelp reviews or OpenTable reservations.

Again, this won't be in the next build of Windows 10 but is 3-5 months away. Instead, we will presumably be still seeing the familiar Internet Explorer browser, which Microsoft says will continue to be part of Windows 10, as it provides an "enterprise mode" for compatibility with older websites, which many enterprises still use.

Universal Apps

(Windows 10 Outlook)

Beyond the way the system looks, probably the biggest change in Windows 10 is what Microsoft is calling "universal apps"—that is applications that run full-screen in tablet mode, in windows in desktop mode, and that can move easily to other platforms such as phones or Xbox, mostly by tailoring the display and menus to the screen size and hardware capabilities while the underlying code remains the same. This isn't a new concept by any means—Microsoft touted it at last year's Build conference—but it looked a lot closer to fruition here.

Microsoft demoed many of the universal apps that will come with Windows 10, and they all looked like big leaps forward over the built-in apps in Windows 8. In all these cases, Microsoft demonstrated the applications running on both desktops or laptops and phones, showing off how applications can easily move from one platform to another.

One of the most prominent of these is the new Outlook mail client, which looks like a huge step forward from the built-in mail app on Windows 8. It now uses the text rendering engine from Word, has better preserved formatting, and lets you do things like insert or edit tables within a mail message. New commands let you swipe left to delete a message and swipe right to flag it. And it supports both Exchange and Office 365 mail accounts, as well as other Internet services.

Similarly, a new version of the Calendar app looks much more powerful, with the ability to categorize events and see different calendars in multiple colors in a single view. This looks largely the same on the desktop and phone versions, but with the screen layout changed to promote better readability with the different size screens.

In many ways, this indicates how universal apps will work—on a full-screen device, you get a ribbon bar with commands at the top (as in Office 2013), but on a smaller-screen device, the menus swipe up from the bottom.

One thing I was interested in was how that even on a desktop or notebook, the look of an application can change depending on the size of the application. In several applications, I noted how the menu systems changed a bit when the application was full-sized, when it was slightly smaller (as if it was running on a tablet in a vertical orientation), and when it was phone-sized. In most cases, the differences didn't seem jarring but pretty natural. This may take some getting used to, but it seems a reasonable way of making things work across different device sizes.

Another universal application that got a fair amount of attention is a new Photos app that combines your local and OneDrive photos into collections, can sync your photos so you have them offline on your PC, and will by default aggregate your photos (doing things like removing duplications and grouping burst shots, though you can change this) and can even automatically enhance them.

A new Maps app is integrating what is now five separate applications on Lumia phones (which includes different choices for viewing Bing Maps, getting turn-by-turn directions, finding places of interest, etc.) in a single new application that will run on both PCs and phones, with syncing between the two and support for Cortana. The Lumia camera application, which started on the phone, is now moving to PCs as well. Other applications that were shown at least a bit include a revised version of the People app, which connects to multiple social networks, and a new version of the Music app. (Your music collection can also be stored in the cloud on OneDrive.)

Calling and messaging will be improved as well, with the new messaging app integrating messaging from SMS systems as well as Skype with easy switching between the two, and allowing both integrated dictation and a one-click audio call; while the calling application will integrate visual voicemail, contacts, and speed dialing. Again, these aren't new ideas, but they should particularly help make the Windows experience on phones easier.

Office

But much of the attention went to new touch-based versions of Office. Microsoft showed demos of the universal app versions of Word and PowerPoint that will run on both PCs and phones (with Microsoft promising that phones and small tablets will include these versions for free).

Word allows you to look at documents in a "page layout mode" (much like on the desktop) or a "reflow mode" (designed for smaller screens) while retaining the formatting. PowerPoint impressed with the quality of the transitions and animation, with the mobile version now able to look just as good as the desktop one. Microsoft also said there would be a touch-optimized, universal version of Excel, though it didn't get as much attention at the event.

Again, as in Outlook and the other universal apps, the ribbon menus have been replaced by commands that swipe up from the bottom when this runs on a phone.

Overall, all of these looked good—definite improvements from the mobile versions now available for Windows Phone, iPad, or Android, though it's hard to really know until we get a chance to use them.

But I was also interested to note that Microsoft emphasized that it was simultaneously working on an update to the traditional desktop or Win32 version of Office, known as Office 2016, also due out in the second half of 2015. Several people on the team told me this version would have significant enhancements, including to Outlook, beyond what is in the touch versions, but didn't give any details. My guess is that the desktop versions will still be aimed more at heavy-duty content creation, and I'd be surprised to see some of the advanced Excel features (like PowerPivot and some of the macro functionality) in the touch version.

Gaming: Xbox Live, Game DVR, and DirectX 12

Microsoft also focused a lot on gaming with Phil Spencer (above), head of the Xbox team, who showed off a new Xbox application on Windows 10, allowing Xbox Live users to see and communicate with their friends. In particular, a new "Game DVR" feature will allow you to capture clips from any Windows game in real-time or from the last 30 seconds by pressing Windows-G. Once captured, these can be shared on Xbox Live or other social networks.

DirectX 12 is the new graphics subsystem inside Windows 10, with Spencer promising this will increase the performance of games by giving developers more fine control over using the CPU and GPU, and saying that on the phone, it can cut power consumption in half for the same scenes. Both Epic's Unreal Engine and the Unity engine are being updated for DirectX 12.

The "universal apps" concept is being extended to gaming, as well, with Lionhead showing Fable Legends for Windows 10 as well as Xbox One, with the two versions looking similar and allowing for cross-platform play.

In addition, for Xbox console games, a new option shows Xbox games streaming to Windows 10 PCs or tablets; this is due to be ready later this year. Spencer also said there would be ways of bringing Windows 10 apps to the Xbox for entertainment and promised more details at the Game Developers Conference in March.

Summary So what does this all mean? For developers, it means a big push to move to the new "universal apps" model so that new tools will work across any kind of Windows device. That sounds great, but Microsoft will have to show developers of existing Win32 applications an easy way to move to the new platform, as well as explain why they really want to do universal versions when even Microsoft is updating its own desktop apps (as well as providing new touch-specific versions). And for developers who target iOS and Android, assuming Windows users can use browser-based versions for their applications, Microsoft will need to explain why universal apps should make for a better experience. We'll certainly see more of this at the Build conference in April.

For enterprises, Windows 10 promises a version that is a more realistic transition from Windows 7 than Windows 8 was, as well as the promise of better security and easier manageability—two important factors as we move into this cloud-first world. As Windows 7 transitions out of support over the next couple of years, we'll undoubtedly see many of those machines migrate towards Windows 10. But the question is how many new corporate applications will get written for Windows, or whether browser-based or iOS and Android versions continue to gain more and more attention.

For desktop and laptop consumers, Windows 10 is likely to be a good upgrade, especially for people with Windows 8 and 8.1 systems, with much better built-in applications covering everything from mail to photos.

The new "continuum" feature should make 2-in-1s work better, but the big question for those devices and for Windows tablets remains getting the right tablet style applications. Universal apps should help, but again that requires Microsoft convincing developers there will be a big enough market.

For phones, Microsoft is acknowledging it is facing an uphill battle. Windows 10 and universal apps might help, but my guess is the first step is getting universal apps designed for desktops and tablets and then getting these moved to the phones. But the company has to convince developers there's enough of a market that they should care. My guess is we'll hear more at Mobile World Congress in March, though the company would only say it would have new flagship phones when Windows 10 ships, which is much later in the year.

In the meantime, we have new preview versions of Windows 10 to try out. Microsoft has made a lot of promises with this, and it will be interesting to see how well the actual product lives up to those claims.

Michael J. Miller's Forward Thinking Blog: forwardthinking.pcmag.com
Michael J. Miller is chief information officer at Ziff Brothers Investments, a private investment firm. From 1991 to 2005, Miller was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine, responsible for the editorial direction, quality and presentation of the world's largest computer publication.
Until late 2006, Miller was the Chief Content Officer for Ziff Davis Media, responsible for overseeing the editorial positions of Ziff Davis's magazines, websites, and events. As Editorial Director for Ziff Davis Publishing since 1997, Miller took an active role in...
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